Tom Wolfe Talk in ‘96

Heard a Youtube lecture of the late author Tom Wolfe, given to Brown University audience in the late 1990s. Some notes:

“The philosopher Nietzsche was prophetic. He said in 1888 that the death of God [as seen by educated people] was unprecedented.  We don’t think of Plato and Aristotle believing in God but they always posited the existence of God. Even the 18th century philosopher David Hume said there must be a God to make the whole system work.”

Nietzche made three predictions in 1888:

1. In the collapse of belief in God, there will be wars such as never been waged on earth before, wars catastrophic beyond all imagining. You have killed God, but you have not killed guilt. And guilt is implanted in human beings very early in life, long before the age of reason. So you will be like the headless body of a religion: there will be guilt everywhere but no way to absolve it. You’ll have no where to turn to expiate your sins. As a result you will loathe not only one another but yourselves. 

2. You’ll be seized with an implacable ever mounting skepticism. Things you accepted just as a matter of course as truth, beauty and eternal verities you will now see as cheap lies and hypocrisies that have been contrived to cover up cynical strategies of power. 

3. And that will be the easy century. Wait till the 21st. You will see horrors beyond your wildest imagination. 

The sociologist Max Weber, contemporary of Nietzche, said the philosopher was right and added: “Art will replace religion in the 20th century. Aesthetics will replace ethics as the standard by which educated people judge one another.” 

Today, if you want to show your spiritual worthiness among the corporate elite, you want to be on the museum board!  Being on the board of the art museum!  

Recently there was a Vatican art exhibit that came to New York. Naturally it was a major NY city art world event.  All the major players were invited but since this was the Vatican’s collection it was also necessary to invite leading Roman Catholics, starting with the cardinal on down to laymen.  They arranged the tables such that there was one art world luminary, one Roman Catholic, etc... This was the most silent public dinner I’ve ever heard in my life. All you could hear was the ping of hotel silver off the plates. I happened to be out in the lobby and overheard two well-known gallery owners and one of them said to the other, “Who in the name of God are these unbelievable people?”  The idea is “what are these pagans, these heathens, doing at a major New York art world event?” This is how far this idea of art as spiritual worthiness has come.